SEAMEN AND UNIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 August 1922, Page 5

SEAMEN AND UNIONS.

CLASH OF TWO SYSTEMS. AUSTRALIA AND ENGLAND. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, August 8. Mr. Havelock Wilson has received Mr. Walsh’s letter of June 25, enclosing a copy of a missing letter dated April 16, in which Mr. Walsh declares that Mr. Wilson, during his visit to Australia in 1912, told him he did not wish British members to ‘be transferred to the Australian Union. He accused Mr. Wilson during the war of assisting the shipowners to rob the country of millions, and says that after the war he seemed more anxious to shelter the profiteers than to protect members of his union and not anxious to make shipping profiteers disgorge some of their plunder, which the seamen of England had piled up for them during the war. Mr. Wilson, in a lengthy and sarcastic reply, suggested that Mr. Walsh is suffering from a mental breakdown and advises the services of a nerVe specialist.

He adds: “You state I have been driven from pillar to post by the British shipowners, but it is alleged by some shipowners that I compelled them to do things they otherwise would have left undone. My union during the last three years transferred over 1200 members of the Australian Seamen’s ‘Union to the British Union without entrance fee. xou talK of the conditions won for Australian seamen and appear to have the idea that if you were at the head of affairs in England you would have accomplished a great deal. Why have you remained so long down under? I am sure in the Old Country there would have been ample room for a man of your outstanding ability, but you evidently prefer to let off your spare gas at a long distance.

“You ask me to rid the seamen of the British shipowners. For what purpose? The latter serve a useful function and create employment for thousands. Does the shipowner not fulfil a function in life equally as useful as yours? (The trouble between these correspondents arose through Mr. Walsh not allowing British sailors to join the Australian Union, whereas in Britain Australians were freely admitted to the union.)